''A Beginner's Mind'' is a collaborative album by American musicians Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine. The album was released by

Asthmatic Kitty Asthmatic Kitty is an American independent record label founded in 1999 by a community of musicians from Holland, Michigan led by Sufjan Stevens and his stepfather Lowell Brams. Some were Holland natives, and others had come to attend local coll ...

on September 24, 2021. After being teased by Asthmatic Kitty for several days, the album was formally announced on July 7, 2021, along with its track listing and two singles, "Reach Out" and "Olympus". Daniel Anum Jasper created the album's cover artwork. The album was met with widespread acclaim from

music critics Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

Background

''A Beginner’s Mind'' was created in a cabin in

upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Is ...

. There, Stevens and Augustine watched movies every day for inspiration.

Critical reception

The album received widespread acclaim from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

score of 81, based on 11 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave the album a 8.0 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus. In the review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

, critic Mark Demming felt that the album was "intelligent and well-crafted, and will appeal to fans of either Stevens' or De Augustine's recent work" but also that it was "less distinct than the music they create on their own."

Track listing

List of films taken from

's Instagram page.

Personnel

* Angelo De Augustine –

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

, mixing,

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, r ...

, arrangement, vocals, bass, bells, cymbals, drums, guitar, piano, synthesizer, tambourine, ukulele, whistle,

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

* Sufjan Stevens – production, mixing, recording, arrangement, vocals, bass, bells, cymbals, drums, guitar, piano, synthesizer, tambourine, ukulele, whistle, Wurlitzer * Josh Bonati – mastering * Daniel Anum Jasper – artwork

Charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beginner's Mind, A 2021 albums Sufjan Stevens albums Angelo De Augustine albums Asthmatic Kitty albums Collaborative albums Concept albums